Embodiments presented herein relate generally to a field of measurement systems and, more particularly, to an elastic conformal transducer apparatus.
A transducer is a device that converts one form of energy into another form. Examples of transducers include ultrasound transducer, antennas, photodetector, and piezoelectric crystal, among others. In many applications, such as, for example, medical imaging, structural testing, non-destructive testing and multipoint contour monitoring, more than one transducer may be required. In such cases, array of transducers may be used. The array of transducers may be placed on a surface of interest for analysis. The surface of interest may not be uniform or may have arbitrary geometries. Thus, it may be difficult to achieve proper positioning and/or alignment of transducers on the surface. One conventional approach to overcome this challenge uses providing flexible connectors between the transducers in the array. Due to the flexibility of connectors between the transducers in the array, the array of transducers may be aligned to the surface. However, the alignment may cause a non-uniform coverage of the surface, leading to dead zones in transducer coverage. The dead zones may cause a loss of vital observation data. Further, the dead zones may also introduce noise/artifacts. For example, in medical imaging, the dead zones may introduce image artifacts into diagnostic images.
An elastic and flexible transducer apparatus is needed that can conform to an area of interest and avoid dead zones in the transducer coverage.